China’s turn to lead on climate change
In reversal, Chinese will likely push Americans to meet commitments on Paris Agreement
In a reversal, it’s likely the Chinese who will push the U.S. to meet its clean energy commitments.
For years, the Obama administration prodded, cajoled and beseeched China to make commitments to limit the use of fossil fuels to try to slow the global effects of climate change.
President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials saw the pledges from both Beijing and Washington as crucial: China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, followed by the United States.
In the coming years, the opposite dynamic is poised to play out. President Donald Trump’s signing of an executive order on Tuesday aimed at undoing many of the Obama administration’s climate change policies flips the roles of the two powers.
Now, it is far likelier that the world will see China pushing the United States to meet its commitments and try to live up to the letter and spirit of the 2015 Paris Agreement, even if Trump has signaled he has no intention of doing so.
“They’ve set the direction they intend to go in the next five years,” Barbara Finamore, a senior lawyer and Asia director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, based in New York, said of China. “It’s clear they intend to double down on bringing down their reliance on coal and increasing their use of renewable energy.”
“China wants to take over the role of the U.S. as a climate leader, and they’ve baked it into their five-year plans,” she added, referring to the economic development blueprints drawn up by the Chinese government.
Even before the presidential campaign last year, Trump had made statements consistent with climate change denial, including calling climate change a hoax created by China. He has also threatened to formally withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. Since Trump’s election in November, senior Chinese officials and leaders have been taking the high ground on the issue by urging all countries, including the United States, to abide by their climate commitments.
The biggest rhetorical turning point came in January, when Xi Jinping, China’s president, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the Paris Agreement was “hard won” and should remain in force.
“All signatories should stick to it instead of walking away from it, as this is a responsibility we must assume for future generations,” he said.
Other Chinese officials at Davos repeated that message, including the energy minister, Nur Bekri, and top executives of state-owned enterprises.
In an interview before the recent climate conference in Marrakech, Chai Qimin, a climate change researcher and policy adviser, said that policies adopted at a recent Communist Party meeting showed that China “has attached ever greater importance to ecological civilization and green development.”
“Everyone is taking this more and more seriously,” he added.
On Wednesday, Global Times, a state-run nationalist newspaper, ran an editorial chastising the Trump administration for “brazenly shirking its responsibility on climate change.”
“Washington is obliged to set an example for mankind’s efforts against global warming, and now the Trump administration has become the first government of a major power to take opposite actions on the Paris Agreement,” the newspaper said. “It is undermining the great cause of mankind trying to protect the earth, and the move is indeed irresponsible and very disappointing.”
The editorial also questioned why China was making concessions on fossil-fuel use when the United States was scrapping its promises: “How can China, still underdeveloped, give away a chunk of room for development, just to nourish those Western countries that are already rich?”
Chinese participation is critical for global efforts on climate change. With its economic growth and rampant infrastructure construction, China consumes as much coal as the rest of the world combined. The burning of coal, which is at the core of the power, steel and cement industries in the country, generates enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. So environmental advocates and officials around the world constantly say China must break its coal addiction.
But unlike in the United States, Chinese leaders and senior officials have consistently said that climate change is a serious problem and acknowledged that changing the energy mix to move away from fossilfuel sources is important.
And because of its air pollution crisis, China announced policies in 2013 to limit the use of coal in the country’s three largest population centers. More recently, scientists have said that there is a dangerous cycle at work: Weather patterns from climate change are exacerbating the smog.
“China is cutting back on coal because of its lethal costs to human health as well as its high carbon emissions, and plans to transition to the energy sources of tomorrow, rather than yesterday,” said Isabel Hilton, founder of Chinadialogue, a prominent website that reports on environmental issues and policy. “President Trump seems intent on reviving a 19th-century energy source rather than pursuing the promise of the 21st century.”